in partnership with presents BLACK HISTORY IN CANADA EDUCATION GUIDE A MESSAGE TO TEACHERS Historica Canada is the country’s largest organization dedicated to enhancing awareness of Canada’s of TABLE CONTENTS history and citizenship. For more information, visit HistoricaCanada.ca. The Black History in Canada Education Guide explores seminal events and personalities in Black A Message to Teachers Canadian history through engaging discussion and interactive activities. This innovative bilingual tool A Message from Lawrence Hill contains updated revisions from the original Guide, which was created in 2010. Synopsis of The Book of Negroes The purpose of this revised Guide is to enhance your students’ critical awareness and appreciation of the Black Canadian experience, grounded in Lawrence Hill’s award-winning historical fiction, Black History in Canada Timeline The Book of Negroes, the remarkable journey of Aminata Diallo and the historic British document known as the “Book of Negroes.” Journey: The Story of Aminata Diallo This powerful story has now been adapted to the screen for the CBC in a miniseries available in time Slavery and Human Rights for the commencement of the International Decade for People of African Descent, which begins on 1 January 2015 and ends on 31 December 2024. We encourage teachers to share the series with Passage to Canada their students but please note it does include sensitive language. Please discuss the language in the series prior to viewing. Further, teachers may wish to take this opportunity to engage in a broader Evaluating Historic Sources conversation with their students about the concepts and language around race and racism. For & Modern Stories of Migration example, the term “Black” as a reference to people of African descent is rooted in racism. Now, the term is used as one of identity, resistance and shared historical experience. In addition, Preserving History please note that the Guide primarily uses contemporary language when referring to Canada, Making History in the 21st Century provinces and cities. When it is appropriate, please discuss the historical language connected to the time frame you are examining. Structured around themes of journey, slavery, human rights, passage to Canada, preserving history and making history in the 21st century, this Guide asks students to examine issues of identity, equality, community, justice and nation-building in both a historical and contemporary a project of: context. Additional resources and information related to Black history in Canada are available on The Canadian Encyclopedia. This Guide was made possible with the generous support of TD Bank Group, whose commitment to Black history and culture has been celebrated. We hope it will assist you in teaching this sponsored by: important aspect of Canadian history in your English, Social Studies, History or Law classroom. in partnership with: ). MAGES I ETTY G / EES L D AVI D Explore additional images, video and maps in OURTESY C ( the interactive guide to The Book of Negroes MAGE I miniseries available now for iPad and iPhone. OVER C Please visit The Canadian Encyclopedia at TheCanadianEncyclopedia.ca The CBC miniseries was produced by Conquering Lion Pictures & Out of Africa Entertainment, in association with Entertainment One and Idlewild Films. 2 A MESSAGE FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR LAWRENCE HILL “I must most earnestly entreat your assistance, without servants nothing can be done … Black Slaves are certainly the only people to be depended upon … pray therefore if possible procure for me two Stout Young fellows … [and] buy for each a clean young wife, who can wash and do the female offices about a farm, I shall begrudge no price …” These lines come from a letter written in 1763 to John Watts in New York. Who do you think wrote the letter? Perhaps a farmer in Barbados, South Carolina, or Virginia? Actually, this urgent request for slaves came from James Murray, governor of Québec. The average 16-year-old in Canada can tell you something about slavery and abolition in the United States. Many of us have read American novels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, To Kill a Mockingbird and Roots. But have we read our own authors such as Dionne Brand, Afua Cooper and George Elliott Clarke? Do we know that the story of African-Canadians spans more than 400 years, and includes slavery, abolition, pioneering, urban growth, segregation, the civil rights movement and a long engagement in civic life? I wrote the novel The Book of Negroes to remove the dehumanizing mask of slavery and to explore an African woman’s intimate experiences and emotions as she travels the world in the 18th century. I like to think that there is a novel for every one of the 3,000 Black Loyalists whose names were entered into the British naval ledger known as the “Book of Negroes” and who then — as a reward for service to the British on the losing side of the American Revolutionary War — were sent by ship from Manhattan to Nova Scotia in 1783. Imagining Aminata Diallo’s life helped me appreciate the struggles of the 18th century Black Loyalists as they travelled back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, touching down in colonial America, early Canada, West Africa and Europe in pursuit of freedom and home. Luckily for writers and readers, fiction helps us see where we have been and who we are now. Synopsis: The Book of Negroes Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle — a string of slaves — Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. Years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic “Book of Negroes.” This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of some 3,000 Black Loyalists who left the United States for resettlement in Nova Scotia. A trained bookkeeper, Aminata is enlisted to record the names of these African-Americans travelling to Nova Scotia in pursuit of land and a new way of life. But when the Loyalists arrive in Canada in 1783, they find that the haven they’d been seeking is steeped in an oppression all its own. Aminata is among the pioneers of Nova Scotia to settle Shelburne and the neighbouring Black community of Birchtown. Her journey from slavery to liberation, and her struggle against a world hostile to her colour and her sex, speaks to the experience of a founding generation of African-Canadians. ). ENKSY L AKU S Discussion Questions ISA L How would it feel to be taken from your parents, your family and the place you call home, never to return? OURTESY C ( LL I H E How is the concept of displacement central to the experience of enslaved Africans like Aminata? C AWREN L DISPLACEMENT: when people are forced from their homes, typically because of war, persecution or natural disaster. 3 BLACK HISTORY IN 26–27 JULY 1784 CANADA’S FIRST RACE RIOT ROCKED NOVA SCOTIA 19 JUNE 17 76 The Black Loyalists were among the first 1793 BLACK LOYALISTS settlers in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. On UPPER CANADA’S LIEUTENANT- REACHED NOVA SCOTIA its fringes, they established their own GOVERNOR JOHN GRAVES SIMCOE’S 1689 The British promised community, Birchtown. Hundreds of ANTI-SLAVE TRADE BILL - OY LOUIS XIV L freedom, land and rights White disbanded soldiers started a riot Attorney General White introduced K C UTHORIZED LAVERY A A S L to slaves and free Black when they found themselves competing Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe’s B IN NEW FRANCE ANY people in exchange for for jobs with Black neighbours who were anti-slavery measure and it passed. M King Louis XIV formally service during the American paid less for the same work. The bill did not ban slavery completely but 1835. C , authorized slavery in New France. Revolution, 1775–1783. marked its gradual prohibition. ). IFAX L A H OMAIN D C NEAR I BL U ASIN /P B A D D FOR ANA D E C 1600s 1700s ). B ). HIVES D C R A D ESERVE R AN RARY IGHTS B I R LL A CIRCA SPRING 15 JANUARY . D T ) L ) 1790 1794 TY /C-115424/L 1608 1734 1792 (P TION MPERIAL TATUTE C I S THE PETITION OF E FIRST BLACK PERSON MARIE-JOSEPHE THE BLACK LL O REE EGROES C F N IN CANADA ANGÉLIQUE TORTURED The Imperial Statute of 1790 LOYALIST EXODUS EY L NTERTAINMENT ET E AND ANGED H A P effectively allowed settlers Richard Pierpoint and C The difficulty of ERT FRI The first Black person thought B A O to bring enslaved persons other Black veterans R Enslaved Black woman Marie- supporting themselves / OF to have set foot on land that EY L UT to Upper Canada. Under the petitioned the government O in the face of widespread ET is now referred to as Canada Josephe Angélique was accused P . / . C statute, those enslaved had of Upper Canada to grant N ERT of setting fire to the house discrimination convinced I B ) was Mathieu Da Costa, a free O R only to be fed and clothed. them land adjacent to NS of her “owner” in Montréal. almost 1,200 Black ( man who was hired as an Loyalists to leave Halifax each other rather than TIONS Although to this day it is unclear OURTESY C C interpreter for Samuel de U ( D whether Angélique actually set and relocate to Africa disperse it amongst White RO Champlain’s 1605 excursion. P settlers. The Petition of ENTURY C the fire, she was tortured and (Sierra Leone).